The Freeh Report directives are clear: Penn State University must change the football-pre-eminent culture that allowed a predator to prey on children, its highest-ranking administrators failing in their duties in order to protect the program.

One of the most challenging tasks facing the university, according to the report, is transforming the culture that permitted former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to molest 10 boys over 15 years.

The report from former FBI Director Louis Freeh directs the entire university community — students, faculty, staff, alumni, the board of trustees and the administration — to change its culture into one centered on ethics and values.

View full sizeJOE HERMITT, The Patriot-News/fileFormer FBI director Louis Freeh talks about the report on the investigation into Penn Stateâs involvement in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Freeh was tasked by the Penn State Board of Trustees to lead Penn State's internal investigation of the Sandusky scandal.

Two weeks ago, the NCAA lowered a gauntlet that effectively sets the tone for that change. The NCAA cut scholarships, placed a four-year ban on bowl games, issued a $60 million fine and, in an unprecedented move, voided every football victory since 1998 — including 111 wins at the hands of its former coach Joe Paterno.

Almost overnight, the university was stripped of its football legacy. The Paterno statue is gone. Sandusky awaits sentencing on the conviction of 45 counts of child sex abuse. Two former administrators — Gary Schultz and Tim Curley — face criminal charges of perjury and failure to report allegations of abuse. Civil proceedings are certain to pend for the university.

These sanctions strike hard in the name of egregious transgressions.

But will they ultimately change a culture the Freeh Report found flawed, long-entrenched and partly culpable for the crimes?

Is it enough to change the administrative culture? Is it enough to change the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of loyal fans?

“I suspect over a long period of time you can change the culture of an institution,” said Ron Smith, a Penn State professor emeritus. “But institutions like universities change extremely slowly. Universities do not move fast. From that standpoint, they are very conservative.”

Asked to address the challenge of changing the culture, David Joyner, Penn State’s acting athletic director, outlined the university’s expectations for the future in a short statement.

“The university has not changed its expectations: Penn State must have the highest academic standards, coupled with highly competitive athletic programs and strict expectations when it comes to following NCAA rules,” Joyner said.

“Moving forward, Penn State must ensure that our culture enforces that we must do the right thing, all the time, and every time.”

’An ingrained culture’

A professor of sports history, Smith taught at Penn State from 1968 to 1996. He worked alongside former President Graham Spanier, Paterno, Sandusky, Curley and Schultz.

Smith said the university has its work cut out for it in transitioning out of its top-down administrative ways. “It dictates from the top, and you better go along with it. It’s been that way ever since I was there,” he said.

A change agent for a university like Penn State and others like Tennessee, Alabama and Michigan, where football is pre-eminent, is more likely to be a streak of losing seasons and the loss of football luster, as opposed to dictates from independent authorities.

“It’s an ingrained culture. It doesn’t change just by its own nature,” said Smith, who is researching the presidential papers of about 80 universities.

“Revolutions change. But there isn’t going to be a revolution in intercollegiate sports unless something more drastic than what happened in Penn State happens, and it’s drastic enough here,” Smith said. “But you don’t change culture quickly and the culture of students and the dominance of football and having stadiums the size of 100,000.”

A former athletic director at three NCAA Division I schools doesn’t think the hearts and minds of fans need to change.

“Why shouldn’t people who are Penn State graduates be proud of their institution, be supporters of that institution in many different ways?” asked Dave O’Brien, director of the sports management program at Drexel University. “The failure isn’t that 100,000 people come to the stadium. That can be a good thing.

“The question has to be asked, why did the leadership of the university fail to act in a moral and legal manner with regard to suspicions and evidence in front of them regarding Sandusky conduct?”

The challenge before Penn State is doable, O’Brien said, pointing to scores of universities that have football programs as big and as laudable as Penn State’s that are not mired in NCAA violations or criminal scandals.

“I understand athletics can sometimes play a more prominent role than it should at a university, but I also know that with proper leadership, athletics can play a suitable role and not an expanded one within a university culture.”

Academic oversight of sports

One sure way to foster change is to return athletics to the purview of academics, said Smith, who in the 1980s served on the committee that moved Penn State athletics to the finance department.

View full sizeJOE HERMITT, The Patriot-News/filePenn State running back Silas Redd (25) left the team after the NCAA sanctions and will play for USC.

At the time considered one of the country’s most successful college coaches, Paterno, in the eyes of fans, brushed elbows with saints, even as his inner circle witnessed or turned a blind eye to Sandusky’s molestation of children.

Lessons from the Navy

The power of insularity played out in the Navy in the early 1990s when a sexual harassment scandal that came to be known as Tailhook, at first contained within high ranks, erupted.

In the wake of the sexual assault of 83 women and seven men, the careers of hundreds of officers, who were found to have failed in their duties, were severed, even amid cries that the Clinton White House had imposed overzealous policies for the sake of political correctness.

The Navy’s handling of the crisis offers Penn State a model for how it can refurbish its culture, even rebuild its brand, former Pennsylvania Congressman and Naval Vice Admiral Joe Sestak said.

The Navy ushered in a sweeping indoctrination of new protocol, with surveys, repetitive courses on proper behavior, among the major efforts to clean up a systemic issue.

The Navy didn’t just hold one key leader responsible, but rather a cadre of 300 ranking Naval officers, all of whom lost their careers.

“It set the tone of what has to be done. This sense of accountability is vital,” Sestak said. “When the crew feels the captain of the ship is not going to be held accountable when something happens, then the crew says, ‘I probably shouldn’t be held accountable.’ Soon you have a ship with a crew that isn’t willing to follow what a leader says. The ship disintegrates. It’s basically chaos.”

View full sizeThe Patriot-News/filePenn State President Rodney Erickson

Change will fail, Sestak said, if the university relies on a new president to set a new tone. Key positions and department heads must also all buy in and be granted leadership.

In the wake of Tailhook, the Navy bestowed command and leadership responsibilities to senior enlisted personnel, whom crew ultimately looked up to and identified with, Sestak said.

“It’s emphasizing that you not just follow rules, people need to feel a valued part of the membership.”

Erickson promises change

Penn State President Rodney Erickson has vowed that his university, while it cannot undo history, can become an agent for change and reaffirm its “core values of honesty, integrity and justice.”

“I promise you, we will learn from our past and take the steps that will allow us to emerge and grow into a stronger, better university.”

Those who have walked the classroom hallways — as well as sat on the Nittany Lions sidelines — say it will be a difficult task for the university to find a new tone for the role football plays on campus.

Change is inevitable for Penn State.

View full sizeAP Photo/Charles Dharapak, 2010Former Sen. George Mitchell is the overseer for Penn State's athletic program, picked by the NCAA.

In the wake of the NCAA sanctions, the football squad has lost a handful players, all of whom opted to change schools. The most notable defection is star running back Silas Redd, who left Tuesday for the University of Southern California.

Sestak believes that for change to succeed, Penn State must rededicate itself to its true mission — that of nurturing and protecting young lives. And for the university to fulfill the directives from the Freeh Report, it must put in place new leadership and a new board, and both must abide by the new mission.

“This is a large effort, and it doesn’t change overnight,” he said. “There are those that argue, ‘You’re going too far. This is going to harm the ethos, the warrior ethos that we need.’ That’s the issue at Penn State.”

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